Camping is an activity that is much enjoyed by both adults and children. People camp to enjoy the outdoors, whether it is at a national park or in their own backyard. Children also like to camp in their homes. Part of the camping experience usually included sleeping in portable, collapsible shelters, usually referred to as tents. The interest in camping has produced many types of tents suited to the particular needs of the camper.
To date, tents available in the marketplace are deployable structures generally characterized by a combination of trusses or struts that are interconnected in a manner that enables the structure to be articulated between a collapsed, retracted or stowed configuration and a deployed configuration. Advantages of deployable structures include improved efficiency because a deployable structure can be entirely assembled during manufacture rather than in the field, improved design performance because greater precision can typically be attained for units assembled during manufacture than for those requiring field assembly, and lower transportation costs because collapsed units are more compact for storage and shipping.
These deployable structures generally involve a truss structure that employs heavy trusses, which are mechanically interconnected with pins, welds or bolts. Because of the manner in which the trusses are secured directly together, this type of deployable structure tends to be relatively heavy for the degree of stiffness and strength of the structure that is achieved.